


Blood for Your Rude Brawls

by talefeathers



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Curses, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Monsters, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22926226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: For weeks, the Redanian town of Verona has been prey to nightly attacks by a bloodthirsty beast. Is the stalker of Verona's streets an unsalvageable monster, or the innocent victim of a curse?
Relationships: Escalus & Valentine (Romeo and Juliet), Mercutio & Valentine, Valentine (Romeo and Juliet) & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Blood for Your Rude Brawls

### 1.

Valentine shouldered his way through the heavy doors of the small elven-made castle that had been repurposed some centuries ago to serve as the Veronan mayor’s estate, removing his hat and shaking rainwater irreverently from his cloak.

“It’s pouring out there,” he grumbled, walking quickly toward the dais in the main hall from which his uncle facilitated town meetings. “The stalls are closing until it clears, and I don’t blame—”

He stopped short when he saw that his uncle had a guest: a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed all in black (which contrasted sharply with the stark white of his hair) stood on the floor in front of the dais with strong arms crossed over his chest. It was the man’s sword, however, strapped across his back like a bow, that made the strongest impression on Valentine. He turned narrowed eyes on his uncle.

“And who’s this?” he asked, venomous.

“Valentine,” his uncle began in a placating tone, “this is Geralt of—”

“A witcher,” Valentine spat.

“A witcher,” Escalus huffed, exasperated, “who I called here to give his professional opinion—”

“We haven’t any monsters here,” Valentine cut across coldly, his eyes flicking briefly to the man in black’s back. “I told you, what we need is a sorcerer.”

“What makes you say that?” the witcher spoke for the first time, turning to regard Valentine with sharp yellow eyes like a raptor’s. Valentine felt gooseflesh skitter up his arms and the back of his neck.

“What has my uncle told you?” he asked in response, darting another glare at the mayor.

“Something stalks your townspeople nightly,” the witcher relayed. “Whatever this thing is, it doesn’t leave survivors, meaning no one has gotten a very good look at it. Before you arrived he’d just mentioned that the remains of its victims are only barely recognizable. Yet you don’t believe that this is within my purview as a witcher. May I ask why not?”

“It isn’t within your purview because it isn’t a _thing._ ” Valentine said, curling his hands into fists at his side. “It’s my brother.”

### 2.

The witcher listened to the mayor’s rain-soaked nephew explain what he meant with growing trepidation.

“My brother had magic,” the boy, Valentine, said, tearing his eyes away from the mayor’s to gaze pleadingly into Geralt’s. He was about Ciri’s age, the witcher realized with a twinge; maybe a year or two older. Honey-brown curls were beginning to spring up from where the rain had plastered them against his head, revealing intelligent hazel eyes. “Not enough for Ban Ard, but some. And three weeks ago he was.” 

The boy faltered, but after a deep breath through his nose and a tightening of his jaw, he pressed on. 

“He was killed. As the result of fighting that broke out between two of the more influential families here, the Montagues and the Capulets. As he was dying he wished a curse on their houses, only. Only I think the curse backfired. I think. I think it’s made him into this creature that’s been preying on our town.” He tried not to betray how much this thought pained him, but Geralt saw the muscles working in his jaw again before the boy turned to resume glaring at his uncle. “And curses can be lifted.”

“Am I to gather, then,” Geralt asked, carefully, “that these killings began soon after your brother’s death?”

“Almost immediately after,” Valentine replied, resolute as if he were carved from stone. “And those killed have been, without variation, members of the two offending families. Montagues and Capulets.”

“Now—now, that’s a bit misleading, Val,” the mayor, who’d introduced himself to Geralt as Escalus, finally cut in. “Nearly everyone in Verona has some relation or otherwise pledges loyalty to one family or the other.” He turned a beseeching expression on the witcher, one reasonable adult to another. “I keep trying to tell the boy that it’s all some horrible coincidence—”

“No,” Geralt cut across him simply. The mayor’s mouth snapped shut. “No, I wouldn’t be so sure that it is. Neither, however, can I entirely discount the possibility of such a coincidence without first observing the creature in question. I know sightings have not been terribly reliable, but is there a place that it seems to frequent? Somewhere that it has been seen multiple times?”

The mayor was shaking his head, but the nephew chimed in again.

“Well, obviously the Montague and Capulet estates,” he supplied. “But I… I’ve also seen him. Once. On these grounds.” He gave the witcher a significant look. “Near our family crypt.”

Escalus opened his mouth as if to protest, then shut it again, clearly disgruntled by the shift in dynamics. The witcher stood still for a moment, considering what Valentine had said.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll see what I can see about this creature tonight and deliver my report in the morning. I shall recommend a course of action and set my price for carrying it out.” He looked up at the mayor. “Does that suit?”

The mayor huffed an exhale, somewhat petulantly. “Down to the ground.”

Geralt glanced down at Valentine when the boy said nothing, and felt a dull pang of sympathy at the tired grief in his face.

“What was your brother’s name?” Geralt asked him, softly.

“Mercutio,” the boy murmured.

“And the two of you were close.”

Valentine nodded. Geralt nodded back.

“If it is Mercutio,” he said, “and he is indeed under some curse, then he may recognize something of yours, by sight or by smell.” He held out his hand. “Would you mind if I borrowed your cap?”

Geralt saw the wariness in Valentine’s expression relax just the slightest bit as he handed the woolen cap over.

“Thank you,” the boy said. Then, with a slight nod of his head toward the witcher and his uncle in turn, he took his leave, disappearing deeper into the castle.

“You shouldn’t indulge him,” Escalus said once he’d gone. “Mercutio was four years his senior; the boy idolized him. His death struck him hard, witcher, much too hard. He’s seeing things that simply aren’t there.”

“That may be,” Geralt shrugged, “but the case remains rather ambiguous for the time being, so I’d like to do my due diligence. Can you corroborate the timeline? Is it true that this monster of yours appeared some three weeks ago, following the death of your older nephew?”

Escalus nodded, somewhat reluctantly.

“Some three weeks ago,” he confirmed.

The witcher nodded.

“I’ll return tomorrow morning with my report,” he said, and he left without giving the mayor a chance to reply.

### 3.

Valentine was still rubbing sleep from his eyes when a servant appeared in his doorway to let him know that he’d been requested in the main hall. He dressed quickly and descended to find his uncle and the witcher standing almost exactly as they’d stood the day before, though he noted that the witcher looked considerably more waterlogged and disheveled, while his uncle seemed to have paled a few shades.

“What news?” Valentine asked, unease squeezing a fist around his heart.

“Witcher—Geralt—if you wouldn’t—?” Escalus smiled in a fragmented way that made Valentine’s stomach lurch unpleasantly. “I apologize, but I don’t think I… Perhaps it would be best coming from…” 

The witcher breathed a weary sigh, but his expression remained carefully neutral once his yellow eyes fell on Valentine’s.

“You were right,” he said. “The creature is your brother. I suspect his curse backfired, just as you said.”

Valentine huffed a breathless laugh.

“But that’s good!” he cried, glancing impatiently from one man to the other. “If—if it’s only a curse—a curse can be lifted! We can call for a sorcerer like we should have done from the beginning, or—well, witchers can even lift some curses, can’t they? I think I read that once—isn’t that true?” The witcher did not answer him, but something sickly squirmed into his expression so that it more closely matched the ashen look on his uncle’s face. “It—it might be worth it to just try your hand,” Valentine pressed on, faltering. “For gods’ sake, why are you both looking at me like that?”

“Curses can be lifted,” the witcher said slowly. “In most cases.”

Valentine felt the impact of those words as if Geralt had struck him.

“In most cases,” he repeated numbly.

“There are some curses,” the witcher explained, “particularly those made by inexperienced magic-users in moments of high passion, that, when left untreated for too long, take hold.”

Valentine took a step back from him, shaking his head. “No.”

“I tried every Sign I know,” the witcher said, stepping forward to maintain the distance between them. “Valentine, this curse. It’s progressed too far to be reversed. Even by a much more skilled magician than me.”

Valentine clamped his mouth shut, breathing in shallow bursts through his nose, shaking his head over and over.

Geralt held out his hand, and in it was Valentine’s cap, soaked through with rain.

“He did recognize it,” the witcher said quietly, “but I don’t believe he will come sundown.”

“What are you saying?” Valentine asked, fear snapping through him like lightning.

“I’m saying that there’s only one way to keep him from killing more people,” Geralt replied.

“No,” Valentine whispered, voice splintering. He could feel himself crumbling—thought he might break under the weight of this second death sentence—until he heard his uncle speak.

“Valentine—” Escalus began, and fury blazed through him, hot and familiar.

“You _fuck!_ ” Valentine roared. He didn’t see Geralt move, but before his reckless steps had gotten him onto the dais where his uncle stood the witcher’s strong arms had locked around him, holding him in place. “He would still be here if it weren’t for you!” Valentine screamed, wrenching uselessly against the witcher’s hold. _“HE WOULD STILL BE HERE IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU!”_

“Valentine,” Escalus tried again, his voice barely leaving his throat.

“Valentine,” Geralt echoed, his voice as firm as his grasp.

“Let go of me, witcher!” Valentine snarled.

“This won’t bring him back,” Geralt insisted. 

“No,” Valentine agreed, almost laughing with the pain of it. “No, my uncle’s useless dithering has made sure of that, hasn’t it?” 

He could feel his strength leaving him, could feel helplessness dragging him toward the floor like a lead weight around his neck. “Let go of me.”

This time the witcher obliged. Valentine sank down to his knees.

“He won’t suffer,” Geralt assured him quietly. “Not on my account. I promise you that.”

This time Valentine did laugh, a ghastly, hollow thing.

“He’s already suffering,” he said, meeting the witcher’s golden gaze. “Isn’t he?”

The only change in the witcher’s expression was a slight tightening of his lips.

“Yes,” he nodded.

Valentine laughed again, shaking his head.

“Then do whatever you want,” he said.

### 4.

That evening, Geralt made his way back to the copse of trees where he had waited out the previous night, his heart a weary weight in his chest. He tried to numb himself with cold strategy, tried to consider how best to approach the unique breed of beast the boy Mercutio had turned into. Instead he kept seeing the way its shining eyes had landed on Valentine's hat, which the witcher had draped from a tree branch the night before. The way its brow had creased into something like confusion. Something like sadness.

The ground was soft and damp thanks to the previous day’s storm, so Geralt was able to sit relatively comfortably while he waited, his back up against an oak tree and his sword a reassuring weight atop his thighs. The sky darkened slowly, and more than once Geralt wished, absurdly, that Jaskier was there to prattle the hours away, though his noise would have been anything but practical in the given situation.

It had been fully dark for almost an hour before Geralt finally heard the eerie, clicking growl that had signaled the creature’s presence the night before. Geralt stood as quietly as he could and settled into a ready stance.

It most closely resembled a striga, which made sense, since strigas were also the results of curses; it, like a striga, was mostly humanoid in shape, but grotesquely elongated, with clawed fingers that brushed the ground only partially due to its stooping gait. The creature’s matted fur, sharp teeth, and the way its eyes reflected the weak moonlight, however, were traits more closely aligned with therianthropes and some strains of “lower” vampire, which gave the beast a somewhat cobbled-together look that sent an unbidden pang of sympathy through Geralt’s chest. 

It crept slowly through the underbrush, choosing its steps with care, before stopping a few paces away from where Geralt stood in the shadows. It sniffed the air, its head twitching and tilting like a bird’s as it sifted through surrounding scents.

And then those shining eyes, set deep in dark sockets, snapped directly onto the witcher’s own. And then, so quickly that Geralt almost didn’t have his sword up in time, the creature lunged.

Geralt’s blade flashed upward, followed by a bright spray of blood. The beast shrieked and stumbled back a step, but realized quickly that the wound had been shallow and lunged again. This time the witcher was ready for it, twisting nimbly away and then striking again, falling into the familiar rhythm of combat—of blows made, dodged and deflected.

Geralt was just beginning to see a way toward the upper hand when the creature swept out one of its overlong arms, blindingly fast, and the ground rushed up to thump him in the back. That was all the opening the creature needed to pounce, crushing his lungs beneath its knees before he could breathe back the air the fall had knocked from him.

_“Mercutio!”_

The beast’s head jerked toward the sound of a new voice in the clearing.

“Fuck,” Geralt wheezed. “Valentine—get out of—!”

“Mercutio,” Valentine called again. This time Geralt, too, turned his head toward the noise, and from where he lay on the ground he could see the boy stepping cautiously toward them, his honey-brown curls mussed from an aborted attempt at sleep.

“I know it’s you in there,” he said.

The beast snarled its horrible, clicking snarl in response, but Valentine’s steps did not slow.

“It’s me,” Valentine said. “It’s Val. Remember?”

The creature gave no indication that it did, continuing to snarl as it turned its body to face the boy more squarely, keeping a knee pressed firmly into Geralt’s chest.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” Valentine said. He would have sounded certain but for the faintest of tremors beneath his voice. “You’re my brother. Remember? You’re not going to hurt me. You’d never hurt me.”

Slowly, Valentine extended his hand toward the beast. Slowly, the creature’s weight lifted from Geralt’s chest. Slowly, Geralt pulled himself to his feet.

“It’s you in there,” Valentine said again. “I can see that it’s you. Let’s go home and get you seen to. Alright?”

The beast was mere feet away from Valentine now, but Geralt noticed that it had stopped growling. Its steps slowed and then stopped as it looked at the boy, its head tilting to one side and another. Geralt had a feeling that, if he were standing in front of the creature instead of behind it, he would see the look from last night in its features. Something like confusion. Something like sadness. 

Geralt’s fingers itched on the hilt of his sword, but he couldn’t quite lift it, not yet. He knew that if the creature decided to tear into Escalus’s remaining nephew at this distance he might not be quick enough to stop it, but he couldn’t overcome the hope warming in his chest.

Maybe, he thought, just maybe, this would be what it took.

Then, deep in the creature’s chest, that awful, clicking rumble started anew, and he could see from the change in Valentine’s expression that the time for hope had passed. The creature pulled back its claws, and the witcher’s sword sang through its neck in a clean silver line.

There was a hovering moment in which Valentine only stood there, a bright streak of blood bisecting his face into two pale halves as he stared at the corpse of what had, once upon a time, been his brother. Then he lifted his dazed hazel eyes to the witcher as he slowly sank to the ground.

### 5.

“Why did you do that?” Valentine heard Geralt ask from what seemed like a very long distance. The witcher was kneeling in front of him with both hands clamped down on his shoulders, but that, too, seemed a faded sensation. “Why did you follow me? You could have gotten yourself killed!” The words slid through Valentine’s brain like silt, no sooner interpreted than forgotten, borne away in the rush of some mind-dulling current.

“Look at me,” the witcher said, and Valentine did. With those unsettling yellow eyes in front of him, the world began to sharpen back into focus. A wave of grief crashed through him like vertigo.

“Oh gods,” he choked, pitching forward. Geralt caught him, pulled him into a rough sort of embrace. “He knew me,” Valentine continued, his breath shallowing into short gasps. “You said he wouldn’t know me.”

“I said he wouldn’t know your hat,” Geralt sighed, the exhaustion in his voice tinged with exasperation. “And I also said he couldn’t be turned back, which, as it turns out, may have been a useful thing for you to have taken to heart.” Valentine felt the witcher’s arms tighten briefly around him with the same edge of harshness that had been in his voice. “Damn it, Valentine, you could have been killed.”

“I didn’t want to bury him again,” Valentine said, his gasping breaths hitching into sobs. “I just didn’t want to bury him again, I didn’t want him to—I didn’t want him—to still be dead. I wanted it to be some mistake, I didn’t—I didn’t want to just put him—back—and never see him again—”

He held onto the witcher as hard as he could, his face pressed almost painfully into his leather-armored chest. Geralt held him firmly with one arm, but ran his other hand over Valentine’s hair with surprising gentleness.

“I don’t want him to still be dead,” Valentine whimpered brokenly. “I don’t want him to not come back.”

“I know,” the witcher said. He rumbled a sigh. “I know.”

Valentine wept with his whole chest, his whole body, and with an acute bitterness he hadn’t known the first time he’d felt Mercutio’s absence. Mercutio had been gone before, and Valentine had suffered that, but now he would _always_ be gone, and the sobs that splintered through him now had more to do with the slow dread of that realization than with the immediate agony of loss. The rest of Valentine’s life would pass in the kind of twisted mirror-realm you read about in stories, where everything seemed normal but for a deep and persistent sense of wrongness, and he was never going to find his way back to the place where things were as they should be.

He was never going to find his way home.

“Come on,” Geralt murmured after what could have been minutes or hours. When Valentine made an instinctive move to look at his brother’s corpse the witcher stopped him, turning his face back toward his piercing eyes with a gloved hand on his chin, calmly but firmly. “We should head back. It’s starting to rain again. I’ll return for the body.”

Valentine nodded and, without quite knowing where he found the strength, he pulled himself to his feet and started to trudge his way back toward the castle.

### 6.

The witcher did not bring up payment once he’d given the mayor his account of the night’s events, and when the mayor brought it up he refused it.

“It wasn’t a monster, as your boy said,” he said, inclining his head toward Valentine, who stood beside his uncle, his drenched cloak dripping rainwater onto the dais. “And it’s never a good business when witchers start to take coin for tasks that fall outside their trade. Accept my condolences for your loss and let me be off with my honor intact.”

“You must allow us to thank you somehow,” Escalus insisted. He looked weaker now than he had before the witcher had made his report, and Geralt wondered how much of his haggard appearance was the early hour, how much of it was grief, and how much of it was guilt. “You’ve saved our town from untold bloodshed, you’ve. You’ve done what I could not. Please.”

Geralt shook his head. “Forgive me my bluntness, mayor, but I can’t accept gratitude for killing a child, however cursed he may have been.”

Somehow, Escalus managed to blanche even further.

“But he was suffering.”

Geralt turned to face Valentine at this interjection. In a word, the boy looked terrible; he was soaked to the bone, shivering with cold, and so tired he swayed where he stood. But his tear-reddened eyes did not waver, and his jaw was set like stone.

“You said so yourself,” he continued, “that he was suffering. And he isn’t anymore, thanks to you.” Valentine took the pouch of coins his uncle had been offering and forced it into Geralt’s hands. “Take it. If not as payment, then as a gift. And if not as a gift,” his lips quirked into the first smile Geralt had seen since arriving in Verona, “then because you’re not likely to find much work between here and Ard Carraigh, and I hear even witchers must eat.”

Geralt raised an eyebrow.

“I’m catching the whiff of a smartass off you,” he said.

“You have no idea,” Escalus confirmed with a weary smile of his own.

The witcher weighed the coins in his hand, then gave Valentine a slight bow, conceding.

“I’ll use it to feed my horse,” he said. “She doesn’t have a witcher’s scruples.”

Valentine returned the witcher’s gesture with mocking solemnity.

“Then we pay your horse,” he said, “and not your scruples.”

Geralt shook his head, something like a grin making its way onto his face.

“Go and get some rest before your tongue runs any further from your head,” he told the boy. “You were brave tonight. Stupid, too, mind. But brave.”

“One could say the same about you,” Valentine rejoined, but he relented with obvious relief, hugging his uncle and clasping the witcher’s forearm as if they were brothers-in-arms before taking his leave and retreating deeper into the castle.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” Escalus asked once he’d gone, his smile fading to make way for a sick species of worry.

Geralt considered for a moment before answering, pulling from a lifetime of loss.

“He’ll never be the same,” he said. “He’ll never be the boy he was before all of this. But.” He hesitated, then stepped up onto the dais so that he could meet Escalus’s gaze more directly. “He’s got a strong heart,” he said. “As long as you stay with him, to anchor him, to give him something to hold onto, he’ll come out of this alright.”

He clasped the mayor’s shoulder briefly, holding his weary eyes with his own.

“And so will you.”


End file.
